Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 3

Christianity are its vital centre, which will stand out
more plainly when purified from these mystical doctrines of a Death as the sin-offering
for the world, and a Resurrection as the great token that that offering avails. Paul did not
think so. To him the morality of the Gospel was all deduced from the life of Christ the
Son of God as our Example, and from His death for us which touches men's hearts and
makes obedience to Him our joyful answer to what He has done for us. Christianity is a
new thing in the world, not as moral teaching, but as moral power to obey that teaching,
and that depends on the Cross interpreted by the Resurrection. If we have only a dead
Christ, we have not a living Christianity.
III. Resurrection points onwards to Christ's coming again.
Paul at Athens declared in the hearing of supercilious Greek philosophers, that the Jesus,
whom he proclaimed to them, was 'the Man whom God had ordained to judge the world
in righteousness,' and that 'He had given assurance thereof unto all men, in that He raised
Him from the dead.' The Resurrection was the beginning of the process which, from the
human point of view, culminated in the Ascension. Beyond the Ascension stretches the
supernatural life of the glorified Son of God. Olivet cannot be the end, and the words of
the two men in white apparel who stood amongst the little group of the upward gazing

friends, remain as the hope of the Church: 'This same Jesus shall so come in like manner
as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' That great assurance implies a visible corporeal
return locally defined, and having for its purpose to complete the work which Incarnation,
Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, each advanced a stage. The Resurrection is the
corner-stone of the whole Christian faith. It seals the truths that Jesus is the Son of God
with power, that He died for us, that He has ascended on high to prepare a place for us,
that He will come again and take us to Himself. If we, by faith in Him, take for ours the
women's greeting on that Easter morning, 'The Lord hath risen indeed,' He will come to
us with His own greeting, 'Peace be unto you.'

PRIVILEGE AND OBLIGATION
'To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.'--ROMANS i. 7.
This is the address of the Epistle. The first thing to be noticed about it, by way of
introduction, is the universality of this designation of Christians. Paul had never been in
Rome, and knew very little about the religious stature of the converts there. But he has no
hesitation in declaring that they are all 'beloved of God' and 'saints.' There were plenty of
imperfect Christians amongst them; many things to rebuke; much deadness, coldness,
inconsistency, and yet none of these in the slightest degree interfered with the application
of these great designations to them. So, then, 'beloved of God' and 'saints' are not
distinctions of classes within the pale of Christianity, but belong to the whole community,
and to each member of the body.
The next thing to note, I think, is how these two great terms, 'beloved of God' and 'saints,'
cover almost the whole ground of the Christian life. They are connected with each other
very closely, as I shall have occasion to show presently, but in the meantime it may be
sufficient to mark how the one carries us deep into the heart of God and the other extends
over the whole ground of our relation to Him. The one is a statement of a universal
prerogative, the other an enforcement of a universal obligation. Let us look, then, at these
two points, the universal privilege and the universal obligation of the Christian life.
I. The universal privilege of the Christian life.
'Beloved of God.' Now we are so familiar with the juxtaposition of the two ideas, 'love'
and 'God,' that we cease to feel the wonderfulness of their union. But until Jesus Christ
had done His work no man believed that the two thoughts could be brought together.
Does God love any one? We think the question too plain to need to be put, and the
answer instinctive. But it is not by any means instinctive, and the fact is that until Christ
answered it for us, the world stood dumb before the question that its own heart raised,
and when tortured spirits asked, 'Is there care in heaven, and is there love?' there was 'no
voice, nor answer, nor any that regarded.' Think of the facts of life; think of the facts of
nature. Think of sorrows and miseries and pains, and sins, and wasted lives and storms,
and tempests,